I must have gotten up to pee at least a dozen times last night. I usually get up once or twice, but this was a whole different thing. I have no idea what is going on. If it continues, I will have to see my doctor. I finally got up around 7:30.
Elsa and I did our walk around the block we do on Sundays when I don’t go to Bikram, but today we went around in the opposite direction from what we usually do. This means that I got to walk on the opposite side of the street. I didn’t see a lot of garbage, but there were some items for which I would need at least a brown paper bag, which I didn’t bring today. I also saw something the size of a personal safe dumped in an undeveloped property. With a deeper look, I saw a white pop tent. I guess there is some homeless person camped out there.
Paulette drove us to church. No, Judy; she was feeling lousy. While there, I shared the passport picture of Sam, Karin, and David’s son. It is the funniest passport photo I’ve ever seen. People were asking if the authorities actually accepted that picture. Sam was two months old when the photo was taken; his eyes are closed, and he is screaming his head off. Not your typical passport photo. The family lives in Seattle. A foreign country is just a few miles away and available for day trips.
Fr. Diego made the announcements and reported a surprise farewell dinner for -Fr. Diego. This is the second weekend he has made that announcement. It’s still good for a laugh.
I worked on the blog, read the NY Times, and napped. I woke up when Damon called. We yakked about many things, but not cabbages and kings. For Father’s Day, they had gone to the top of the tallest building in downtown LA. In case anyone wants to know, Damon is a great father. And, he is proving to be a super great step-son. I can’t tell you how much this means to me.
Yvette came up while I was ending my conversation with Damon with two slices of pizza in hand. Dinner! She did me a few favors. We reshelved the books she took down the other day that I had cataloged. There were all of 5 books on the top shelf. She got those down. I scanned three of them with my phone, and we reshelved immediately. I was going to ask Josh if he could help me figure out how to delete phone messages on the house phone. I usually deleted all messages, but I suspect there may be some from Mike on there. I want to save those. As I talked with Yvette, I showed her how I couldn’t delete them individually – and deleted them. I just hadn’t held the erase button down long enough. She also carried the large case of almond milk into the storage area for me. I could do it on my own, but it would be a little more complicated.
I sat down to read Chapter 2 of Mike’s book. I found chapter one repetitious and tedious, too academic. Chapter 2 proved much more enjoyable.
Yvette had gone down to her quarters and came back up with a laundry load to put in the dryer. I had been meaning to ask her a question about what it meant to ‘open’ the hips. She confirmed that it involved an outward rotation of the femur, the leg bone, in the hip socket. I showed her something I was currently working on, spreading my two hip bones apart. She said, “Opening the hip bowl.” I have been initiating my stride when walking by doing that. It reminds me of how ballet dancers walk, except I keep my feet in parallel. I said something about walking that way. It didn’t register with Yvette. I said if I do that, I’m initiating my stride from my core muscles. I think the idea is that the more I can engage those large core muscles to perform anything, the better off I am. I’ve never used my core muscles for walking—good time to start. Let’s see where this goes. I may wind up putting too much strain on that arthritic hip and bam, time for Hip Replacement Surgery. Well, that’s always been a possibility. So far, so good.
I sat down to do more work on the blog. I got several entries out today. Yay, for me.
